God Knows You Got No Choice
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: A "What We Do In the Shadows" AU, in which Jimmy/Edgar/Johnny are flatting together and prepping for the annual community Christmas party. Also, they are vampires. It's gay. You're welcome.


One Week before the Annual Christmas Undeath Party

*filmed with consent

Edgar opens the door for the film crew, dressed in a turtleneck of an almost indescribably boring brown color.

"Come in, come in," he says mildly, waving the camera through. He turns back to the hall and leads them through it, saying over his shoulder, "I like to make sure everyone gets an invitation into the house. I know you all don't need it, but fair's fair and treat others as you would et cetera et cetera."

The house is shoddily lit, stained in places with a rusty color that appears, in some spots, to be actually bulging off the walls. The kitchen is immaculate, however.

"I'm the only one who ever cooks," Edgar says, as the cameraman reaches into the frame and does a surreptitious dust-swipe. "So this area is actually in pretty good shape. The trick to rooming with other people," he adds, "is to pick a spot you actually care about and just make sure it… stays…"

Edgar is now looking past the camera crew, at something in the refrigerator. This is possible because someone has left the refrigerator door open. He takes a deep breath.

" _Johnny_!" he yells, slamming a hand on the counter with a _thud_ that makes the cameraman physically jump. "Come down and close the fridge this instant or I will nail you into your god damn coffin!"

* * *

Edgar:

"You know, I take it back. The trick to rooming with people is actually to look deep, deep into your heart and ask yourself: what am I willing to put up with today?"

Edgar: [emptying a pocket full of long nails onto the table]

"Not fucking this."

* * *

The crew opens up a shot of what appears to be the basement. It is accessed by a wooden staircase that is slowly collapsing in the middle, and the floor is strewn with various infomercial products in mixed states of deconstruction. Johnny is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, trying to rip apart a ShamWow towel with his bare hands. Edgar is standing over him, fingers drumming his forearms.

"-But how do you _know_ the light still exists when the door is shut?" Johnny says, heels kicking at the ground now in his efforts to wrench the towel apart. It isn't responding.

"None of us have _day jobs_ , Nny," Edgar says. "If you cost me one penny more in electric bills, I'm disconnecting our cable package."

Johnny freezes. "You wouldn't," he says.

 _"I_ can keep myself entertained," Edgar says, pointedly. "What are _you_ going to do, hm?"

Johnny opens his mouth for a moment, silently, and then finally he shuts it with a narrow, sly look. He leans forward. "You're forgetting Jimmy," he says.

The ceiling makes a popping sound, like the timbers are cooling off and contracting in the darkness. Edgar doesn't seem moved. "I can survive that," Edgar says, "just knowing that as miserable as I might be, you'll be a hundred times more miserable."

Without seeming to notice himself doing it, Johnny slowly tears the ShamWow towel apart like a piece of crumbly French bread.

"House meeting in fifteen," Edgar says.

* * *

Johnny:

"You know this is _my house_ , it was my house first. I mean, it was somebody else's at _some point_ , but I killed them so finders keepers, it's mine. Edgar thinks he runs the place just 'cause he pays the bills and the taxes and stocks the…"

[Johnny pauses]

"Okay, so he runs the place. It was mine first though."

* * *

Edgar is standing outside of a door on the upper floor, shoulder against the wall. Unintelligible strains of garbled heavy metal blast through the plaster. He raps on the frame with his knuckles. "Jimmy," he says, "house meeting. Come on."

The tinny music continues. Edgar knocks harder.

"Jimmy!" he shouts. "Put a pin in it! I need you in the kitchen!"

The door creaks open. In the gap, Jimmy is slumped against the frame with a face full of smeared eyeliner. He is entirely naked except for the skewed fishnet undershirt that hangs off his shoulders. He looks directly into the camera. "Oh no," he says, with absolutely no inflection, "it's film day."

Edgar snaps his fingers at him. "Pants," he says. "Two minutes. Kitchen."

"Wrong kind of film," Jimmy mutters, and then disappears behind his closed door.

Edgar sucks in a deep breath and looks at the ceiling. "It's like herding cats," he says.

* * *

Back in the kitchen, which has been shined up just perceptibly in the last few minutes, the table has been pulled away from the wall and set in the center of the space. Johnny is perched in his chair like a gargoyle. Jimmy, now wearing pants as well as a loose jacket, slumps against the back of his chair. Edgar has his hip leant against the refrigerator.

"So last night," he says, "I was minding my own business, doing a crossword in the living room, looking for a pen, when what do you think I might find lodged in the couch cushions?"

Neither of the men at the table say anything. Jimmy runs a hand through his own rats nest of hair in distaste.

Edgar opens the fridge and pulls out a large Tupperware full of human hands. They are in various states of decay and mummification.

"You guys have _got_ to start cleaning up after yourselves," he says, shaking the Tupperware. One of the hands snaps closed like a venus fly trap. "This is, frankly, more than a little unsanitary. What if we had company over?"

Jimmy rolls his eyes. "We're just gonna eat them anyways. Who cares if there's a couple hands lying around?"

"I care!" Edgar says. "It's not _polite_ , leaving food around for other people to find. Jimmy I know you're still going through your whole teenage rebellion phase, but Johnny, _come on._ Show a little class."

Johnny glares across the table. "What's he got to be rebellious about? He's been nineteen for long enough."

"Maybe the fact that I'm stuck at nineteen _forever_ , for starters," Jimmy says, waving a hand in the general direction of his red-spotted face. His nails are painted black. "The acne? The fucking hormones? You don't think that's worth being a _little_ mad about?"

"I don't know what you thought was gonna happen when you started trailing after me like a cat in heat," Johnny says. "Every day, hanging around my mailbox, _please Johnny, make me a vampire too-_ "

"Okay you don't have to do the whole-"

 _"Please Johnny I'll do anything, I love you-"_

"OKAY I'LL CLEAN THE LIVING ROOM MEETING OVER."

* * *

Edgar:

"I honestly don't know how it happened, with Jimmy. I was gone for a month and I came back and there was this gothy little teenager hanging around. I guess we could have just eaten him. I mean, we thought about it. He was just so enthusiastic, though. Kind of hard to say no to. It would have been like eating a puppy."

* * *

Johnny:

[stuffing live rats into a bladeless blender]

"Jimmy is actually a millennial, which is probably why he's such a shit all the time."

* * *

Jimmy:

"Man, I don't even know how old Johnny is, I thought at first he was from, like, 1412 or something, but he's better at using the computer than I am so…"

* * *

Edgar:

"I think Johnny once told me he was born in 1902. Of course he also once told me that he spent a decade trapped in a cellar, in Kansas, under a fallen chimney, so who knows. Also he keeps confusing the number nine with the number six so it's really anyone's guess."

* * *

Johnny:

[watching the rats go around and around inside the blender, like a carousel]

"Can you believe it's already the eleventh century? Time really does fly."

* * *

Johnny is leading the cameraman down into the basement. It's completely dark. The stairs creak dangerously underneath them. "Okay," Johnny says, "here we go!"

He flips a wall switch. The basement erupts into a cascade of multicolored lights, like a Christmas display from hell. Several illuminated Pillsbury doughboys look down from the tops of the shelves. Fairy lights strung across the ceiling blink pink and red. Several lava lamps and a strobe are strewn across the coffee table, which is propped up under one broken leg with a blinking sideways Christmas angel.

Johnny claps in delight, all but bouncing on the step. A music box whirrs to horrific life, playing the least tuneful version of Claire De Lune ever produced by man or machine.

There's a fizzling, crackling noise, and then the carpet catches fire.

"Fuck!" Johnny says, leaping down off the rails and into the mess of it. "Tiny Tim! It's alright, I've got you!"

As Johnny snatches the Christmas angel out from underneath the coffee table, Edgar's voice through the basement door says, "Nny? What's going on down there?"

Johnny freezes. He looks from the smoking angel in his hands to the merrily burning coffee table.

"Johnny?" Edgar says, "Tell me I'm not smelling smoke."

Fire licks up the edge of Johnny's boot and catches on his pants. He flings Tiny Tim across the room in alarm as he scrambles to smash out the fire on himself with his hands.

"You know fire can _kill_ you," Edgar says, his voice closer now. "Tell me we're not experiencing another one of your poorly planned suicides."

The entire room erupts in flames.

* * *

Edgar:

[smudged with soot, looking exhausted]

"Johnny's been alive for so long I don't think he takes it seriously anymore. He'll go through these Adams Family periods where he just tries everything he can think of to kill himself. I blame television really. I think he watches those soaps where the cast are always dying and gets jealous."

* * *

At the kitchen table, again, now distinctly scorched and varying degrees of sooty, the three vampires regard a slag of melted plastic which blinks pathetically at them, every so often.

"Not Tiny Tim," Jimmy says, visibly devastated. "Anyone but Tiny Tim…"

Johnny is face down on the table top, thumping his fist into the wood futilely. "It should have been me," he says. "It should have been me."

* * *

Edgar is standing by the door to a destroyed old beetle bug, clothes changed but face still a little smeared with soot. He's flipping through a ring of keys. The sky is brown with light pollution behind him.

"It's a surprise," he says, sternly. "It took me ages to find, too. I didn't even have time to shop for groceries. I guess the next time we have company over I'll just have to make them coffee before I kill them."

On his hip, there's a brown paper bag that bulges in the middle.

"Here," he says, "I'll show you."

He lays his keys down on the roof of the car and grabs the thing in the bag by its top. He reveals a grinning Christmas angel, this one with rosy cheeks and round, mad eyes, and a pair of long curling ceramic hands. Edgar smiles down at it.

"It's fucking horrible isn't it," he says warmly. "They're going to love it."

* * *

The majority of the space in the living room is now occupied by a stack of blankets and cushions as tall as a person, on top of which the new Christmas angel is blinking and slowly waving its ceramic hands in robotic little circles. Some bargain bin music box is playing the Nutcracker suite.

Jimmy and Johnny are pumping their fists in tandem as the angel genteelly waves down at them.

"Tim! Tim! Tim! Tim!"

* * *

Jimmy:

"Edgar's pretty cool, I guess. I thought he was like, the maid? Or something? When I first started coming around. But it turns out he's been a vampire for a while. At least a couple decades. Which is why he's so stuffy, I guess."

* * *

Edgar:

"Look, I was a gay man in the fifties, I'm not stuffy. I just have _manners_."

* * *

Johnny:

"Edgar's, uh. Particular."

* * *

Jimmy:

"He's got his shit together, at least. Not like me. I just wish he didn't always try to act like he's my mom or whatever. It makes jerking off to him really awkward."

* * *

The camera is inside of Jimmy's bedroom. It's a cavern of clothing thrown over every available surface, including a computer which glows out from underneath a crumpled blanket like a face in a hood. He's standing in the window, a razor flip phone pressed against his ear. Something that is either a corpse or a blow up doll occupies his bedsheets.

"No, Eric," he says, "I didn't fucking say that, okay?"

He kicks the wall.

"We're not getting _married_ ," he says. "How would I even get into a church, you dumb fuck?"

A pause.

"We're all going to the party together, it's not like we don't all share the same stupid car. What the hell? No! That does _not_ mean they're available!"

He jabs a finger at the place in the glass where his reflection would be.

"You try that and I can already tell you Johnny'll bite your hand off. Yes, I know from experience! Fuck off!"

Jimmy snaps the phone closed and lobs it at the bed, which makes a sound like air escaping a balloon.

"Close the fucking door," he says, without turning around. "I'm about to repress some goddamn emotions."

* * *

Edgar:

"Oh, we go to the party every year. You've got to, when else are you going to see everyone? I'll admit it's kind of hokey. The chair of the planning committee learned how to set up an event back when ambiance meant somebody's spinster aunt banging away on a pianoforte in the back corner. I like it though. Johnny puts up with it too. I think it does him good to see people every so often.

"Jimmy's actually been a really good sport about it, the last couple years. He's got that friend, what's his name. Eric. Well they're about the same age, give or take a decade. Eric's always very friendly with me. Such a shame about those teeth of his. They really do seem to get worse every year."

* * *

Jimmy:

"Eric's such an asshole. I _know_ he does it just to make me mad. I bet he's jealous because I live with _two_ bad ass real vampires and he's still living with his _mom_ in Toronto."

* * *

Johnny:

[painstakingly mounting Tiny Tim Two onto a blood-streaked cardboard cross above a chewing gum altar]

"Oh, no. I definitely know Jimmy's got a crush on Edgar. I'm crazy, not blind. It's just funnier to watch him run in circles."

Johnny: [placing a tiny mistletoe crown on Tim's ceramic head]

"If he ever gets the balls put together to ask one of us out, at that time and that time only, I will _think_ about not gutting him alive."

* * *

The tv in the living room, fully muted, plays an early rerun of a holiday classic. Edgar is fiddling with the bunny ear antennae as static snow comes and goes over the screen. Jimmy is in the corner, slurping on a blood bag like a Capri sun.

"So uh," Jimmy says, "we're all going to the party this year, right?"

"Sure," Edgar says.

"So what if," Jimmy says, "hypothetically, maybe this year we go together?"

"We are going together," Edgar says, distracted. "It's Johnny's car."

"No, I mean, like. What if we went _together_."

Edgar thumps the side of the set, and the snow momentarily recedes. "Jiminy Christ," he mutters, "this thing is a piece of crap."

"I was thinking," Jimmy goes on, dogged, "you and me, maybe we like… go talk to your boring friends and do some dumb _Pride and Prejudice_ dance. But together?"

"Did you watch _Pride and Prejudice_?" Edgar asks, finally looking away from the set for a moment. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. "Did you like it?"

"No," Jimmy says, breaking out in a sweat. "Definitely not."

"Oh," Edgar says. He seems nonplussed. "It's my favorite film. But the-"

"The nineteen-forty version," Jimmy finishes automatically, "not the 2005 version."

"…Yes," Edgar says. "That one."

"Hated it," Jimmy says, still sweating buckets.

"What a shame," Edgar says, slowly. "I would have loved to have someone to talk about it with."

He goes back to twisting the bunny ears, but less focused than he was a moment before. A thoughtful frown line wrinkles his forehead.

* * *

Jimmy:

"I'm fucking dead, I'm dead meat, I wish I had just died when Johnny bit me."

* * *

Down in the basement, the scorched carpet is still lying on the floor and what remains of the coffee table has been piled up in the corner, with the blown string lights. Johnny's cardboard crucifix is lit up from underneath by a plastic snowman that changes colors.

"Okay," Johnny says, from headfirst inside of the large antique wardrobe that contains his clothing. "What do you think?"

He wriggles back out and holds up two suit coats for the cameraman's perusal. The one on the left is weighted down with so many buckles it resembles a straight jacket. The one on the right has sleeves that hang slightly too long, composed of black and white fabric bands painstakingly stitched together.

"Beetlejuice," he says, waving the one on the right, "or Yugioh?"

The cameraman points, hand just visible at the edge of the frame.

"Yugioh?" Johnny says, examining the buckled jacket. "Yeah, you're right. Gotta be ready to throw down at any time."

* * *

Edgar:

"I really don't know where he finds this stuff. Jimmy I understand, I think he's got a membership card at the Hot Topic, but Johnny? He can't be getting them off victims. Nobody dresses like that. I swear to god that t-shirt of his says something different every time I see it. He can't just be _making_ them.

"Can he?"

* * *

In the back of the basement, Johnny meticulously threads a singer sewing machine.

He spits out a needle that had been pinned between his teeth. "It's a Christmas party," he says, "so I want this outfit to really say, _touch me and I'll eviscerate you."_

He reaches into the depths of the drawer and pulls out a jar filled with loose googly eyes and iron spikes.

"It just needs a little more," he says, " _pizzazz."_

* * *

Edgar's room is lit with a clean overhead fixture. His coffin has a reading light and a thick layer of firm cotton pillows at the bottom. He's pulling items from his closet and shaking them out, laying them across the futon-sofa which appears to have been untouched since it left the factory.

"We don't get a lot of chances to dress up," he says, flicking some dust off a sweater and then returning it to its place. "It's a great time to break out the good china, metaphorically speaking. I've been thinking about this all month, and I think I finally have it figured out."

He holds up a sweater that is almost entirely identical to his current brown argyle, patting it proudly.

"Look," he says, "it's made with apalca wool."

* * *

Jimmy's bedroom is a whirlwind of flying clothes.

"Edgar does the finances and whatever," he says, throwing a pair of skinny jeans over his shoulder. "I thought vampires were all mega rich, but it turns out mostly they're kind of poor. Hard to hold down a job when you can only go out at night and can't get near mirrors. Eric does game journalism online, but I'd rather eat a stake."

The mess has shifted just enough to make out a Nine Inch Heels poster hung up above the computer monitor.

"I don't know where Edgar gets his money from. I mean, obviously if you eat a guy you're not just gonna leave his wallet lying around, so there's that. But I went and asked him for some money to get new boots last month and he just forked over a hundred dollar bill, no questions asked. I went with Johnny to the Hobby Lobby once and you would not _believe_ the craft shit that guy can pack away."

He lifts a shirt up to his face and gives it a cursory sniff. "Good enough," he says, and tosses it over his shoulder too. A square of actual flooring is just barely visible.

"I mean I'm glad he's keeping the lights on," Jimmy adds, "but how the _fuck_ is he doing it?"

* * *

Edgar:

"Actually I just stole the identity of the person who owned this house before Johnny. They owed some back taxes, but the social security was still coming through. You'd be surprised how many people are willing to believe you're picking up a check for your sweet old grandma when you wear the right sweater."

* * *

Edgar stands on the runboard of the dilapidated beetle bug, arm thrown over the top of his door. A cat runs across the driveway.

"Jimmy!" he shouts. "We're about to be late! What are you doing up there?"

In the driver's seat, Johnny's fingers thump down on the steering wheel in a ceaseless manic rhythm. The yellow smiley-face bob on the car antenna sways in the half-hearted breeze.

* * *

In Jimmy's room, even more of a wreck than previously, the closet has been literally emptied of clothes.

"Where is it where is it where-"

A vibrating pile of shirts cascades to the floor revealing Jimmy, who pops up to the surface with a small round case in his hand.

"Fuck, yes," he says. He pops the lid off and examines the pale cream inside. "This is the last tin of foundation I own."

The back of the tin reads _Maybelline_.

Jimmy leans over his shrouded vanity and shoves his fingers into it, hastily smearing the contours of his face. The mirror reflects nothing except the shadowy outline of the camera man. The color of the makeup is more or less correct for Jimmy's current complexion, though it would have been a bit too pale for him when he was human. He works the cream into the arc of his cheekbone and spreads it over his nose—it goes on a bit smeary, showing the vague outline of his fingertips.

"It really sucks not being able to go into a makeup store," he says, digging up another layer of cream. "It's like a fucking horror house of mirrors in there. I can get cheap eyeliner from the Asian corner store, but I'm up shit creek for foundation these days. I used to only wear this when I went to the vampire club, but, uh."

He stops, poking at various places on his face. He's streaky, but the worst of the red spots are successfully covered.

"I'm absolutely gonna get him to dance that stupid lederhosen dance with me," Jimmy says, wiping excess foundation off on his pants. He looks up. He looks around.

"Where the fuck did I put my outfit?"

* * *

The party is being held in the Elks Lodge, which is covered on the inside in photographs of previous Masonic grandmasters and many past successful bake sales. Someone has strung up Christmas lights, but forgotten to plug them in. Along the long buffet table there are several bowls of various kinds of ice waiting patiently for anyone to scoop up a handful and chew on it. Rather than deal with the complications of draining and bottling, the party planners have simply placed a corpse at the back of the room with a syrup tapper screwed into the jugular.

The camera man has a wide vantage of the room, where a seat or so in front of him, Anne Gwish is smoking a clove cigarette in a long cigarette holder.

"Can you believe the makeup on him," she says to her friend Cleo. She swishes her cigarette holder in the vague direction of Jimmy, who has just entered the room and is lurking uncomfortably behind Edgar. "He looks like he's never _heard_ of a blending sponge."

"That's so sad," Cleo says. "You know he's gonna be a pizza face _forever."_

Anne turns in her seat and makes direct eye contact with the camera. "Hey, she says, "if you're gonna film me, I at least want an interview."

* * *

Anne:

[smoothing her back her flat hair]

"What, the cigarettes? No, I can't taste them. They just look cool."

* * *

Edgar spots Anne Gwish from across the room and makes a beeline for her chair. After a moment, Jimmy trails behind. Edgar is spiffy in his holiday sweater, which looks almost exactly like his usual sweater but with an imperceptibly more holiday atmosphere. He reaches out and strong-arms his way into a handshake, despite Anne's visible attempts to get her right hand out of his range.

"Anne, how _are_ you?" he asks.

"Fine," Anne says, "you know. Dead. Whatever."

"It's always _such_ a pleasure to see you," Edgar says. "I thought you said you wouldn't be coming back after last year."

Anne lifts her cigarette holder, effectively hiding her mouth behind her hand. "Well. Since they invited me and all."

"And I specifically remember you saying," Edgar goes on, "how anyone caught dead at a bingo night like this would be better off staking themselves than showing their face in the undead community ever again?"

"I love your sweater," Anne says, "is it _genuine_ old geezer, or did you have to settle for the dupe?"

"I see you're still smoking cloves," Edgar replies. "I, for one, absolutely cannot wait until you graduate up to smoking garlic."

Anne breaks from glaring at him to glare past him. "Jimmy," she says. "Or are you still going by Jimmy?"

* * *

Jimmy:

"The first time I met Gwish, Edgar told her my name was Jimmy. So then she goes, _oh, is that your vampire name?_ And I panicked-"

* * *

"Ha fuckin ha," Jimmy says, "I _know_ there's no such thing as vampire names. I was just kidding about the Darkness thing."

Anne blows a cloud of smoke between Edgar and Jimmy, tapping ash off onto the table.

* * *

Jimmy:

"So anyways she goes, _Oh, is that what they call you down at_ Borris and Natasha's _?_ And I don't fucking know how to talk to girls so I say, _yes_ , and she goes _Oh my god I can't believe you actually admitted that, do you have fake fangs and everything_?

"Anyways, I'm gonna kill her. I'm already working on a five step foolproof plan for next Christmas."

* * *

Anne:

"Jimmy's such a dweeb. I don't know what Johnny saw in him. I don't know what Johnny sees in either of them, to be _brutally_ honest. He's way too good for that crew. Did you see his jacket tonight?"

Anne: [takes a drag]

"Yeah. Totally metal."

* * *

Jimmy flaps away the worst of the clove smoke and catches Edgar by the shoulder, muttering "Like Anne Gwish is your _actual_ name," as he drags Edgar way. His hand covers where Edgar's shoulder blade probably is. It's difficult to be sure in that sweater.

"Why do you always want to talk to her," he says, a moment later, as the cameraman bumps aside several plastic chairs to keep up with the conversation.

Edgar, who is bemusedly allowing Jimmy to chaperone him away from Anne, says, "She'd be put out if I didn't antagonize her a little bit."

"So _let_ her be," Jimmy says.

"Oh, don't be uncharitable. It's Christmas." Edgar gently peels off the hand on his shoulder. "Anyway, at the end of the night Anne Gwish still has to go home with Anne Gwish, and that's a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone."

Jimmy grumbles.

At the end of the room nearest them, a little old grey haired woman settles down at the pianoforte and starts to pick at the keys. Jimmy tenses up from his spine to his toes.

"Oh," Edgar says. "Salacia's at the piano. I guess she's going to do one of her minuets again."

Salacia cracks her knuckles and begins banging on the keyboard, pumping out something old-timey at double the speed you usually hear it.

"I stand corrected," Edgar says. "Sounds like a waltz."

"Uh," says Jimmy, "do you wanna—were you thinking—"

But Edgar isn't looking at him. "Where's Johnny?" he says.

The camera swings across the room, back to the buffet table, and zooms in on Johnny who is leaning against the corpse and absently sucking on the severed end of a human thumb. A thin trail of blood drips from the knife in his hand onto the linoleum. A queue of party guests hover uncertainly a few feet away, empty plastic cups clutched in their hands. The camera swings back to Edgar.

"Never mind," he says, watching the scene with narrow eyes.

Jimmy coughs into his fist. "So, about that dance."

Edgar turns back to him. "I could be wrong," he says, apologetically, "that might not be a waltz. I haven't really paid attention to that stuff since Cotillion in '54."

"What? No. why would I give a shit—"

A figure swings in from the left frame, interrupting the conversation bodily. He takes Edgar by the hand in a handshake that shows no sign of letting up, left hand closing firmly around Edgar's elbow. His greased down black hair and smudgy eyes easily mark him out as someone, generally speaking, of Jimmy's ilk.

"Wow," he says, "Edgar, it's been so _long_. You're looking great, by the way. Is that alpaca?"

Jimmy stamps his boot on the floor. "Eric you bitch, you only know that because I told you."

"Eric!" Edgar says brightly, "great to see you. How's your mother?"

Eric screws up his face for a moment. "Fine, I guess. Hey! Sounds like a waltz or whatever playing right now, doesn't it? Maybe you wanna take a spin with me!"

Jimmy, standing behind Edgar's shoulder, makes a series of sharp gestures describing guillotine and dismemberment. Edgar gives him an awkward laugh. "Ah," he says, "I don't really dance. Not since Cotillion in '54."

"Nooo?" Eric asks, his grinning spreading to reveal oddly thick white teeth. "Too bad Jimmy, looks like you're back to square one, huh?"

Jimmy flips open his middle finger with enough force to bounce his whole arm, fuming.

"Jimmy?" Edgar says, and turns around just as Jimmy stuffs his arm behind his back.

"Huh?" Jimmy says.

Edgar stares at him uncertainly for a moment. "Let's get some ice, Jimmy," he says, at last. And then he starts off towards the long buffet table. Eric rolls his eyes as Jimmy mimes the universal signal for _watching you_ , and trots after Edgar.

* * *

Eric:

"Nahhh, I'm not interested in Vargas. I'm a _real_ vampire, I'm into _real_ vampires. Edgar's like, I dunno, your weird single cousin. Jimmy's just _gaga_ about him though. It's really funny. By the way, if he put something in my drink, you'd tell me right? This isn't one of those journalistic integrity things, you would tell me? Right?"

* * *

The camera zooms in on Edgar and Jimmy, hunched over the bowl of crushed ice.

"I know I don't usually pry," Edgar is saying, quietly, "but are you and Eric going through a rough patch?"

Chunks of crushed ice fall out of Jimmy's slack jaw. " _Wha_?" he says, around the chunks that remain.

"You know you can talk to me about it?" Edgar says. He puts a comforting hand on Jimmy's arm. "I'm your friend, you know?"

"You're my landlord," Jimmy says, dumbly.

"You don't even pay rent," Edgar reminds him.

They stare at each other. Edgar waits expectantly.

"I'm not dating Eric?" Jimmy tries.

Edgar frowns, blinks. "Oh. Okay." He glances across the room, and then back to Jimmy. "But you've been prepping to see him all week. You put on makeup and everything. Last year I could barely get you in the car."

"No—I mean yeah, there was someone—I mean I was trying to get someone else to go with me. Not Eric. Holy shit, not Eric. I'd rather die."

The camera slowly slides left, to where Johnny has appeared a few feet down the table, casually cleaning blood off the blade of butcher's knife he just used to amputate the community corpse. He lifts an eyebrow, and then looks back down to his work.

"Sooo," Edgar says, "who… was it?"

Jimmy kicks the leg of the table. "Doesn't matter," he says. "It was stupid. They wouldn't be interested."

Edgar smiles a crooked little smile. "Don't be like that. Nothing ventured nothing gained, right? You're a bright… young man, uh, a smart young vampire… Well anyway, anyone who knows you the way I know you would be delighted to have a chance to share something like that with you."

Jimmy sniffles discreetly. "Thanks man," he says.

"Of course," Edgar says. He squeezes Jimmy's arm. Jimmy looks down at it. Edgar belatedly remembers to let go of him.

"So I guess I'll just… go," Jimmy says, backing away slowly. "Over there… somewhere… Be cool or whatever, in that specific corner…"

"Okay?" Edgar says.

Jimmy backs out of frame. Edgar watches him go, at first, and then turns back to the ice bowl. He frowns thoughtfully.

And then there's a high pitched whine growing louder and louder until Jimmy rockets back into the frame, launching himself at Edgar and knocking them both back into the table.

"It was yooooouuuu," he says, squeezing Edgar like a boa constrictor, eyes screwed shut. "I changed my mind, I don't wanna be cool I just _wanna date you_."

* * *

Johnny:

[with one of the take-home goody/blood bags from the party, now also slurping on it like a Capri Sun]

"I was just kidding around, I wasn't gonna eviscerate him. For that. If he doesn't stop walking around the house naked though, I _will_ cut something off."

* * *

Edgar:

[looking ruffled, glasses slightly askew]

"I actually don't think he knows Johnny and I are married."

* * *

In the center frame, Edgar and Jimmy are still frozen mid-squeeze. From stage left, Johnny walks across the frame, buttoning his coat back up.

"I'm going out to the car," he says, as he passes by. "If I have to make eye-contact with another single person I will burn this place to the ground."

Edgar and Jimmy watch him go, mortified. From the direction of the pianoforte, someone wolf whistles.

* * *

Edgar: [clears throat]

"Not that we couldn't come to—some kind of arrangement, I think."


End file.
